Contrary to popular belief, intermittent fasting is not an extreme or dangerous form of “dieting.” It’s actually a very healthy practice that’s loaded with a number health benefits. What kind of health benefits? Everything from reducing risks that are associated with obesity, reversing diabetes, to possibly assisting in killing cancer and more.

What Is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting is about timing your meals to allow for regular periods of fasting. Recommendations for allocating time throughout your day to go without food range from approximately 12 to 16 hours. This would mean, for example, only eating between the hours of 11 am and 7 pm, and doing so everyday. There are other ways to do it and we will get to that later in the article.

This does not mean binge eating, and taking in vast amounts of junk food into your system during the times allocated for yourself to eat. Doing so would be extremely counter productive and very unhealthy. In fact, the whole practice of fasting can be lost with how you break that fast. Just as important in the entire process of fasting is what you are eating, and how you are eating during the time allocated for you to do so, as well as what you eat before and after you fast.

For example, research published in 2010 indicated that intermittent fasting with compensatory overeating did not improve survival rates nor delay prostate tumor growth. (source) Essentially, by “pigging out” on non-fasting days, the health benefits of fasting are lost.

New Research On Intermittent Fasting And How To Do It

Some of the most recent research on this phenomenon was conducted by Dr Mark P. Mattson, Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging. He is also a professor of Neuroscience at John Hopkins University. The researchers, who also included the BBC’s Michael Mosley, reviewed previous studies on intermittent fasting and concluded that this type of eating could be healthier than eating three meals or more per day. Their work was published, and has been published many times in the past. Some of those studies are linked later in the article.

One recommended way of doing it, as did the BBC’s Michael Mosley in order to reverse his diabetes, high cholesterol and other problems that were associated with his obesity is what is known as the “5;2 Diet.” On the 5:2 plan, you cut your food down to one-fourth of your normal daily calories on fasting days (about 600 calories for men and about 500 for women), along with plenty of water and tea. On the other five days of the week, you can eat normally.

Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) was an American writer and cartoonist. He was most widely known for his children’s books, which he wrote and illustrated under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss.

He was a perfectionist in his work and would sometimes spend up to a year on a book. It was not uncommon for him to throw out 95% of his material until he settled on a theme for his book. For a writer he was unusual in that he preferred to be paid only after he finished his work rather than in advance.

In a saucepan, combine the sugar, flour, and salt. Add milk in gradually while stirring gently. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture is bubbly. Keep stirring and cook for about 2 more minutes, and then remove from the burner.

Stir a small quantity of the hot mixture into the beaten egg yolks, and immediately add egg yolk mixture to the rest of the hot mixture. Cook for 2 more minutes; remember to keep stirring. Remove the mixture from the stove, and add butter and vanilla. Stir until the whole thing has a smooth consistency.

Slice bananas into the cooled baked pastry shell. Top with pudding mixture.

The colors of the rooms within your home need to bring out your personality. While most of us may not spend a lot of time thinking about room color, it affects every day of our lives. Room color can influence our mood and our thoughts. Colors affect people in many ways, depending upon one’s age, gender, ethnic background or local climate. Certain colors or groups of colors tend to get a similar reaction from most people – the overall difference being in the shade or tones used. So when it comes to decorating, it is important to choose wisely.

In order to have a beautiful home, you do not have to worry about trends. Color trends will come and go. The people who live in a home make it beautiful by choosing colors that reflect their likes and their personalities. The trick is to blend those colors you like into a pleasing combination. Choosing color combinations is one of the most intimidating steps for beginners. Color has the power to change the shape and size of furnishings as well as the shape and size of the room itself. Selecting colors is not difficult if you equip yourself with some basic information about color and its effects, so let’s find out more about room colors, and how these influence your mood.

Choose Wisely!

Keep in mind that each color has a psychological value. Think about how those colors make you feel- they can influence any feeling from tranquility to rage. So when trying to create peace and harmony in your home, choose your colors wisely. Some colors in large amounts will have just the opposite affect on you and your loved ones’ moods.

What mood do you want to create? Which colors will help you achieve that mood?

Find clear answers to these questions. If you find this task difficult try to look at magazines, decorating books, blogs and websites for ideas, or let your fabric be your guide. In fact, this is a good approach to take even if you’re starting from scratch. Fabric, carpeting, furniture and tile are available in a more limited range of colors than paint, so choose them first and then decide on your paint color. Once you find something you like, limit the number of colors in a room to no more than three or four. Too many colors can make a room look busy or cluttered. Paint is fairly inexpensive and transforms a room more quickly than anything else, so you can afford to experiment a little.

Room Colors and Their Effects

Understand that colors behave in three basic ways : active, passive, and neutral. You can easily match every room’s colors to your personal desires, to your taste taste and to the room’s purpose. Light colors are expansive and airy, making rooms seem larger and brighter. Dark colors are sophisticated and warm; they give large rooms a more intimate appearance. Now let’s find out more about colors and what they can do to a room:

Red

Red raises a room’s energy level. It is a good choice when you want to stir up excitement, particularly at night. In the living room or dining room, red draws people together and stimulates conversation. In an entryway, it creates a strong first impression. Red has been shown to raise blood pressure, speed respiration and heart rate. It is usually considered too stimulating for bedrooms, but if you’re only in the room after dark, you’ll be seeing it mostly by lamplight, when the color will appear muted, rich, and elegant. Red, the most intense, pumps the adrenaline like no other hue.

Yellow

Yellow captures the joy of sunshine and communicates happiness. It is perfect for kitchens, dining rooms, and bathrooms, where happy colors are energizing and uplifting. In halls, entries, and small spaces, yellow can feel expansive and welcoming. Even though yellow although is a cheery color, it is not a good choice to use in main color schemes when it comes to designing a room. Studies show that people are more likely to lose their temper in a yellow interior. Babies also seem to cry more in a yellow room. In large amounts, this color tends to create feelings of frustration and anger in people. In chromotherapy, yellow is believed to stimulate the nerves and purify the body.

Blue

Blue is said to bring down blood pressure and slow respiration and heart rate. That is why it is considered calming, relaxing and serene, and it is often recommended for bedrooms and bathrooms. Be careful, however: a pastel blue that looks pretty on the paint chip can come across as unpleasantly chilly when it is on the walls and furnishings, especially in a room that receives little natural light. If you opt for a light blue as the primary color in a room, balance it with warm hues for the furnishings and fabrics. To encourage relaxation in the social areas ( family rooms, living rooms, large kitchens) consider warmer blues, such as periwinkle, or bright blues, such as cerulean or turquoise. Blue is known to have a calming effect when used as the main color of a room. Go for softer shades of blue. Dark blue has the opposite effect, evoking feelings of sadness. So refrain from using darker blues in your main color scheme. Stay with the lighter shades of blue to give you and your loved ones a calm effect.

Green

Green is considered the most restful color for the eye. Combining the refreshing quality of blue and the cheerfulness of yellow, green is suited for almost any room on the house. In the kitchen, green cools things down; in a family room or living room, it encourages unwinding but has enough warmth to promote comfort and togetherness. Green also has a calming effect when used as a main color for decorating. It is believed to relieve stress by helping people relax. Also believed to help with fertility, making it a great choice for the bedroom.

Purple

Purple in its darkest values (eggplant, for example) is rich, dramatic, and sophisticated. It is associated with luxury as well as creativity, and as an accent or secondary color, it gives a scheme depth. Lighter versions of purple, such as lavender and lilac, bring the same restful quality to bedrooms as blue does, but without the risk of feeling chilly.

Orange

Orange evokes excitement, enthusiasm and is an energetic color. While not a good idea for a living room or for bedrooms, this color is great for an exercise room. It will bring out all the emotions that you need released during your fitness routine. In ancient cultures orange was believed to heal the lungs and increase energy levels.

Neutrals

Neutrals (black, gray, white, and brown) are basic to the decorator’s tool kit. All-neutral schemes fall in and out of fashion, but their virtue lies in their flexibility: Add color to liven things up; subtract it to calm things down. Black is best used in small doses as an accent. Indeed, some experts maintain that every room needs a touch of black to ground the color scheme and give it depth. To make the job easier, you can rely on the interior designer’s most important color tool: the color wheel.

Color Effects on Walls and Ceiling

The ceiling represents one-sixth of the space in a room, but too often it gets nothing more than a coat of white paint. In fact, for decades, white has been considered not only the safest but also the best choice for ceilings. As a general rule, ceilings that are lighter than the walls feel higher, while those that are darker feel lower. Lower” need not mean claustrophobic: visually lowered ceilings can evoke cozy intimacy. As a general rule, dark walls make a room seem smaller, and light walls make a room seem larger.

Conclusion

These general guidelines are a good starting point in your search for a paint color. But remember that color choice is a very personal matter. You are the one who has to live with your new paint color, so choose a hue that suits you, your family and your lifestyle.

“I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.

-Said by President Abraham Lincoln while suffering depression

I have often wondered how this great man could have got this country through a civil war, and reconstruction, the awful years of war and healing he lead this nation through… and to do it while suffering from a mental illness. And depression at that. A disease that takes away all will, indeed any inertia what so ever.

I know this feeling he describes. For me, when it is at it’s worst, it is not the miserable moments of hopelessness, or even the days of crying jags that rack my body with sobs. The worst of it is when I feel nothing. Anything that I have found enjoyment in before, does nothing to move me. If I can muster a small spark of energy to go through the motions of something that I absolutely must follow though on, if it is done, at its best, it is with a zombie like presence. And quite often very quick to snap.

These are the days I remove myself from people. Alone upstairs, if my husband is at home. He especially I don’t want to cause any hurt. He is not the most compassionate person, and that is difficult, even painful to experience, I admit. Yet, if he did process emotion to that depth, I don’t believe we would still be together after all these years. I don’t want this to be misunderstood. Mark is a wonderful man, he has been a good husband to me. He isn’t cruel, or uncaring. He is just not one to express emotion for the most part. He is a ‘shake it off,’ ‘suck it up,’ type of man. His father was raised Amish until adulthood, and his mother raised in foster care. From there I will leave the reader to draw their conclusions.

How this has played out in my own life has been to my benefit. It forced me to take responsibility for my own emotions, and the consequences of acting on those emotions. For my own emotional well-being. I had to learn to fight through the foggy haze of depression, and find words to tell Mark what I needed. He would never be able to empathize with me to such a degree, that he would be able to articulate from my disoriented state how to respond to me, or even what to do, sometimes. Because of this, I began to remove myself from people when extremely irritable, or easily wounded mental states had me in their grip. Both of these states can easily be escalated into far more dangerous situations. Learning to do this, allowed me to eventually understand the difference between ‘reacting,’ and ‘responding’ to a situation. Those who have Bipolar disorder typically react to emotionally stimulating events, and if any higher cognitive processing happens of the event, it is an after thought.

Those two changes in how I handle my life now, have changed my life for the better. Removing myself when highly vulnerable to being hurt, or doing the hurting, and not reacting, but pausing, thinking, and then responding. Seems so simple just to read it here. It wasn’t. It isn’t. Some-days, it isn’t even possible. There also was a book I read years ago that was a big help in doing both of these, and more. Don Miguel Ruiz’s “The Four Agreements.” I won’t spoil it, and summarize other than to say- it’s a very small book that packs a punch. It really is about just four agreements, decisions you make about how your going to live from then on. It is a life changer. I reread it yearly.

The biggest life saving tool in my arsenal however, is writing. Journaling, and when I can reach through the fog well enough, writing poetry. For me, poetry brings something beautiful back from the depths of a dark and debilitating depression. My father use to say, “but its so sad…” Well, I was depressed, that was kind of the point??? He still doesn’t totally get it; someone who hasn’t experienced depression to that degree, won’t. He does somewhat understand what it means to me now, to have something to show for it all. After coming back from that place.. And I have come back, time, and time, and time again. I hope that I always will.. And in those moments when sadly, I am hoping the opposite- I have been blessed that lost deep with in those dark, empty and lonely times, earthly, and heavenly angels have been there to pull me through.